WAVVES

American group Wavves have announced headline shows, adding dates for Sydney and Melbourne in early January after their performances at Falls Festival. The group has played in Australia several times, including at festivals Splendour In The Grass and Groovin' In The Moo, as well as their own shows around the country.

Nathan Williams and Dylan Baldi are two sides of the same coin. Both artists released their first two records from their parent’s garage and basements, to slowly amass a following. Both took this success to bolster their ranks, expanding into full band formations and release more expansive critically acclaimed and commercially successful records. Williams on King of The Beach; Baldi on Attack On Memory.

After his appearance at Splendour In The Grass with Wavves, bassist Stephen Pope spoke to Larry Heath about the hazy memory of meeting Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the band's relentless touring and writing schedule, and what counts as exercise while on tour.

A rainy Saturday night flooded with patrons dying to catch surf-rockers Wavves, talk about a wet night. Opening for the Californian boys was local act Bad//Dreems. Every time I catch these guys, which is becoming increasingly frequent, they continue to improve and captivate the audience, warming the crowd up perfectly for the main course.

The sun was out as more than 17,500 punters descended on North Byron Parklands, the permanent Splendour in the Grass site for the first time, for a day headlined by past festival favourites Mumford and Sons. Situated about 20 minutes north of Byron Bay, this is the site the Splendour organisers bought to be the event's home quite a few years ago, though has been caught in council approval hell ever since. This resulted in two glorious years in Woodford and a brief return to Belongil Fields down the road last year. But, much like Bluesfest before it, we now have the chance to get used to a brand new site, which will no doubt grow and develop in the years to come; as it will do by pure capacity alone. As part of the deal with council, the festival is starting off with a reduced capacity this year, and will add more patrons gradually (by the thousands) in the years to come, with 25,000 being the reported capacity that will be allowed in 2014. We'll even be seeing a series of other events on the site, such as the recently announced Byron Falls Festival over New Years.

The line up for the 2013 Outside Lands Festival has been announced, with the San Franciscan audience set to get amongst some awesome sets courtesy of Paul McCartney, a reformed Nine Inch Nails and more. From August 9-11, Golden Gate Park will become a music lover's haven; tickets are on sale now from sfoutsidelands.com/tickets, with a portion of ticket sales going toward San Francisco's Recreation and Park Department.

Will they or won’t they? While we will never be sure who is playing a festival until the promoters actually release a line-up, it’s always fun to speculate and throw around any rumours that come up. The next big festival yet to announce their line-up is Splendour In The Grass. With the line-ups for Primavera, Summersonic and Coachella festivals already out there, it’s time to salivate over who will may (or have already actually confirmed) continue down here fore Australia’s premier winter festival.

Macklemore and & Ryan Lewis continue thier dominance on the charts, but Flume isn't too far behind. The Coopers Amp Prize rolls on with website content, and Josh Pyke giving you an opportunity to be mentored by him, all this in this weeks State of Affairs.